Re: Corn silage?

Posted by Weldon K on August 23, 2013 at 08:58:11 from (98.16.26.161):

In Reply to: Corn silage? posted by M Nut on August 22, 2013 at 19:31:10:

Some years when we had more corn silage than our upright concrete stave silos would hold, we piled silage on top of the ground, sometimes on bare earth, other times on old plastic ( 6 mil black poly) saved from a previous silage cover usage.
A couple of times I placed a row of firewood logs or old power poles end to end lengthwise on both sides of the area to be piled on and pushed up earth against the logs to hold them in place. Then I placed an eight or ten foot wide piece of plastic over the logs with about two feet (which would be under the silage area) and let the rest lay out on the ground beside the log. The silage pile was then filled either with self unloading wagons driven through and on the pile as much as possible or unloaded at the end and silage pushed up on the pile with tractor and loader. Piles were about five or six feet deep. After pile was completed by tractor packing and some hand smoothing the side plastic pieces were placed up the sloping sides of the pile and then the new cover piece was placed. It was wide enough to cover over the logs too. We were careful to leave a small depression in the silage pile just at the edge of the log. After the top cover was installed, sand was dumped on top of the cover plastic in this depression as a weight. Tires were then used to thoroughly cover the entire sloping sides and as much of the top as we had tires for. One end of the pile had logs across it and had the sand on it. The other end which was opened for feed out just had a pile of sand dumped on the cover piece. When we emptied the pile during a fair weather period in mid winter, it was all loaded on wagons and blown into an upright silo. There was not more than a wheel barrow load of spoiled silage in about 80 tons. The last pile that we made was only about 20 tons or so and I used some old junk round bales, on the flat side, in a U shape. Plastic was draped down the bales and onto the floor of the area just as I did with the log sided piles before. Silage was pushed into the area with tractor and loader. At feed-out there was some spoilage discovered where mice had cut the plastic where they could hide in the cavities between the bales. I wished that I had pictures of some of these piles but it was before I got a digital camera and computer.

I have read of piles being covered with plastic, the entire edges being covered with dirt, and then a vacuum pump used to remove all air from the sealed pile through a pipe under the edge of the dirt covered plastic. Picture I saw showed a shrink wrapped looking heap with no tires used for weights.

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